The New York Times has more on the Plame Name Game this morning. Around the time Novak's article mentioned Valerie Plame by name, both Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were working on a response to mounting criticism over the President's mention of Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa in his State of the Union speech. A Times source said they were not involved in an orchestrated attempt to discredit Wilson or reveal his wife's identity.
People who have been briefed on the case said the White House officials, Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby, were helping prepare what became the administration's primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address six months earlier.
They had exchanged e-mail correspondence and drafts of a proposed statement by George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, to explain how the disputed wording had gotten into the address. Mr. Rove, the president's political strategist, and Mr. Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, coordinated their efforts with Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, who was in turn consulting with Mr. Tenet.
At the same time, they were grappling with the fallout from an Op-Ed article on July 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Mr. Wilson, a former diplomat, in which he criticized the way the administration had used intelligence to support the claim in Mr. Bush's speech.
The work done by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby on the Tenet statement during this intense period has not been previously disclosed. People who have been briefed on the case discussed this critical time period and the events surrounding it to demonstrate that Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby were not involved in an orchestrated scheme to discredit Mr. Wilson or disclose the undercover status of his wife, Valerie Wilson, but were intent on clarifying the use of intelligence in the president's address. Those people who have been briefed requested anonymity because prosecutors have asked them not to discuss matters under investigation.
It little way down in the article there is this.
It is not clear what information Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby might have collected about Ms. Wilson as they worked on the Tenet statement. Mr. Rove has said he learned her name from Mr. Novak. Mr. Libby has declined to discuss the matter.
"Mr. Libby declined to the discuss the matter" with whom, I wonder. Most likely the press. Meanwhile Judith Miller sits in jail protecting a source. The Times knows the identity of that source and they most likely know what the source is a source of. I won't even speculate who the source might be, except to say that with our gotcha press on a sustained attack against the Bush Administration -- remember Dan Rather and his forgeries, remember Michael Isikoff and his desecrated Koran rumors -- it's not likely she's protecting anybody in the White House. I suspect it's more likely to be Fifth Amendment considerations on the minds of our honorable press than defense of the First.
So, here I sit with my tin foil hat jammed down firmly over my ears. I'm sticking with the conspiracy theory. CIA and compliant press join forces to unseat a sitting president.
Be sure to visit Tom Maguire who has established himself as Plame Central.
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